We are so used to the constant internal dialogue that we have no conception of what it means to have ‘silence of the mind’. We strive to fill up any silence with sound, whether through conversation, consumption of media, music or even treating television or radio as ‘background noise’ for our ... Views: 449
An important principle for the practitioner of yoga is to recognise that the old habits and ways of acting and reacting need to be removed in order to open up the capacity to receive the new powers of consciousness that are in the process of manifesting. Yoga is more or less a process of applied ... Views: 450
One of the core principles of spiritual growth is the development of ‘equality’ in the sense of accepting whatever comes into one’s life with equanimity. This does not mean that the proper standpoint excludes action against injustice or oppression; rather, that one recognises that sometimes the ... Views: 23
As the seeker proceeds in the path of yoga, it is important that he not misinterpret or misunderstand what he experiences or what the source of the experience may be. Most people confuse the terms Self, Spirit, and soul so that they really cannot appreciate the difference aspects or ... Views: 293
The soul is a portion of the Divine specifically detailed to each individual being that is created as part of the universal manifestation. The soul develops the inmost being, the psychic being, through lifetimes of experience. This psychic being grows, matures and transitions through birth and ... Views: 264
In the West, the existence of the soul has been mainly perceived either as a matter of religious belief or scientific skepticism, neither necessarily based in actual experience. At one point, scientists decided that if the belief that the soul departs at the time of death is to be considered as ... Views: 62
Within a particular lifetime we experience a sense of continuity of being, which we normally attribute to the ego-personality. The sense of ego helps us identify with the body, life and mind we currently inhabit and utilize. This ego-sense is held together by the force of memory and by an ... Views: 279
In the ancient text of India, it is said that a human birth is essential for progress, and that even the Gods, if they desire to attain some new development, need to take birth in a human form. It is clear that generally the physical body, the vital nature and the mental development dissolve ... Views: 325
The questions of what happens to us after we die, whether we are reborn, and if so, in what form or manner have occupied human beings from time immemorial. What is the purpose of life and what are we, as conscious individuals, supposed to do with the life we are living?
The Tibetan Book of ... Views: 252
Most people live their lives centered around the ego-personality and the external life. Their focus and actions are based in the needs, desires and gratifications that are put up by the body, the vital life-energy and the mind. They do not have a conscious relationship with the soul or the most ... Views: 268
Why do we not immediately recognise the existence and centrality of the soul? We tend to set our standpoint in the external consciousness which is directed outwards, and which is constantly receiving sense impressions and pressures impinging on our body-life-mind complex. The sense organs, ... Views: 221
The most direct way to align oneself with the Divine Will is to treat the soul, the psychic being, as the standpoint from which the being takes its stance. This is not a mental analysis, a desire of the vital or a physical need or impulsion; rather it takes the form of an aspiration, a prayer, a ... Views: 20
Many spiritual practitioners have realized that the external life we customarily lead is a life of ‘illusion’, and that it is based in a flawed view of reality. This does not mean that our life, existence and action has no real significance; rather, that the way we define our lives, based on the ... Views: 186
Faith is generally put in opposition to Knowledge, underlying the long-term dispute in the West between ‘religion’ and ‘science’. This debate has religion requiring belief in the tenets of the religion based on pure faith, and denying the validity of a science-based knowledge approach that may ... Views: 419
One level of the deep ignorance within which we live and act is our bondage to the specific individual life, personality and situation that we inhabit. We are generally unaware of anything prior to our birth or which occurs after our death. Some even take the view that there is no “meaning” and ... Views: 465
Spiritual traditions around the world agree that it is on earth, in the physical body, that progress takes place. They treat the soul’s time in the body as the time for growth, for development, for maturation. When the soul leaves the body at the time of death, it goes through a transition that ... Views: 230
Western medical science holds that illness has several potential causes. Failing to digest food properly is one such cause. Stress on the body and its organ systems is another. A third is failure to obtain proper nutrition or fluids. Aging is considered a contributing factor in the breakdown of ... Views: 468
How does Mind evolve out of Matter? Some scientists will tell you that through random chance, chemicals and electrical forces and heat led to the development of beings capable of reflecting, thinking and contemplating deep thoughts, exploring the nature of life and the universe, etc. They do not ... Views: 311
If we ask almost anyone where thoughts come from, they will say that they are produced in the brain. The brain is some kind of thought-factory. They don’t know how. They don’t know why. They don’t know what causes certain thoughts to develop. They recognise that sense perceptions influence the ... Views: 430
An individual experiences a craving, an urge, a desire and automatically tries to fulfill it through some action. If it is hunger or thirst, the individual wants to eat or drink. If it is a more complex desire, something that cannot simply be accomplished, the mind is brought into the picture to ... Views: 507
Seeking visions has been a part of what has been called a “spiritual journey” by countless individuals around the world throughout history and in all religious and spiritual traditions. The “vision quest” is a well known and accepted activity among seekers. Christian mystics, for instance, chose ... Views: 486
We tend to internalize and “own” our weaknesses or internal struggles. This is the ego-consciousness at work. We also fail to recognise that there are multiple different sources of pressures on us, some of which are ingrained habits we have accepted into our surface being, others are seeds we ... Views: 434
All consciousness operates on a continuum with each plane representing certain vibrational spectra that are perceptible to those able to receive and process the vibrations of that plane. We know from research with various beings such as insects and animals of various sorts that they have ... Views: 285
There is considerable confusion about the various terms used to describe the spiritual quest and the reality of our individual existence. Sri Aurobindo distinguishes and defines the different aspects or elements and their role in spiritual practice. There is additional confusion around the term ... Views: 533
We are born into a family, a culture, a society, a given economic and political system, an educational process, and a vast number of social habits, customs and predilections which create for us a framework within which we are expected to take up our destined place in society and carry it ... Views: 167
We have a vision. We get inspired. We have a near death experience. We come back from the spiritual experience and we are sure it is meant to change our lives, as we suddenly have a whole new vista open up before us, a realm of truth, beauty, harmony, light. Then we come back into our normal ... Views: 311
Human beings are essentially dependent on their mental perception in order to function in the world. This mental perception frames what we see, how we experience it, and our interpretation. We thus try to transcribe anything provided to us by our senses (or provided directly to the mind without ... Views: 306
We have the tendency to get caught up in trying to capture a line of thought or to verbalize a perception or idea. When we have an experience of the spiritual realms, the first thing we want to do is to create a thought-form to explain it, to organise it, and to be able to describe it. The very ... Views: 201
Ordinary human life is essentially driven by response to outer circumstances, and is based in the desires, needs and reactions of the ego-personality. The interaction between people in a society, whether in the smallest groupings such as the family, or larger groupings of community, country or ... Views: 752
We live in a time of extreme challenge where the entire fate of humanity, and of the planet we live on, is at risk. We have explored in every possible direction and created thereby the ultimate fragmentation, pitting every religion, philosophy and creed against one another in a battle for the ... Views: 714
The vital nature craves excitement. It also craves recognition and acknowledgement, in the form of vanity, aggrandisement of the ego, and seeking for fame. The vital nature is also quite impatient and wants to see results right away. When the vital nature enters into the spiritual realm, it ... Views: 211
Humanity is facing a crisis of existential proportions. Climate change, pollution, income inequality, access to fresh water and food, and the consequences that lead to mass migration, war, and increased risk of pandemic disease vectors all are forcing us to confront our entire way of looking at ... Views: 675
Each individual is rooted primarily in one of the major component aspects of our human individuality. Some are clearly rooted in the physical and their thoughts, actions and needs are those called for by the physical being. The vast majority of people are moved by their vital being, and are ... Views: 273
One of the reasons that a seeker is advised to have the assistance of an experienced guide, or guru, in the spiritual path, is that it is easy to be confused about the real meaning of what is written in the texts. For instance, when we hear about the concept of ‘conscious sleep’ or we see Arjuna ... Views: 249
When the seeker initially passes the limits imposed by the body-life-mind complex and the ego personality, the experience can be one that is totally disorienting, raising fear and a shrinking back within the limits of the outer being. This is the experience of the boundary where the ego must ... Views: 479
As long as an individual is rooted in his own ego-standpoint, he sees and interprets things from that standpoint and cannot, by definition, ‘see things as they are’ in the wider creation. There is the famous story of 5 different observers of a traffic accident, each one observing from a ... Views: 5
We see pattens repeating from the macro-level to the micro-level. The study of fractals shows us that there are indeed certain patterns and relationships that repeat themselves in every smaller configurations as we drill down toward the micro-level. The macrocosm and the microcosm reflect the ... Views: 314
We live in a world that prizes action and that continually impinges upon us with various information feeds and input from all directions. Quiet and stillness, the ability to remain calm without agitation or upset, the ability to achieve true peace in the mind, in the vital and nervous being and ... Views: 378
We are conscious and aware of forces and energies that operate within a certain specified range. Anything that falls outside that range, whether above or below, remains unseen and unknown to us, even if the forces operative in those superior or inferior ranges impact our thoughts, feelings, ... Views: 284
There are realms that operate under different rules, or laws, than what we have come to expect here. Our earthly life is a complex amalgam of physical, vital, mental and psychic consciousness, and this mixture implies that none of these are able to express themselves in the purest sense of their ... Views: 424
As the individual works to understand the wellsprings of the motives, impulses and forces that rise up through his being in the subconscient and push him into action, a subtler understanding begins to develop. The need to distinguish between the inherited habits and embedded atavistic movements, ... Views: 371
We bring into this life many propensities as well as genetic tendencies, which are compounded and accentuated by early learning that takes place in the family and in the society. Prenatal influences as well as learning that takes place after the birth process and in the very early childhood ... Views: 309
We tend to not only identify with the values of our family, our country, our religion, but we also internalize the standpoint taken by them, so that we view situations, actions and reactions, and history through the lens of this standpoint. This of course can create a highly biased viewpoint of ... Views: 441
As if the genetic, prenatal and neonatal influence, and the habits and customs of the society into which one is born is not sufficient burden to have to deal with as it rises up from the subconscient levels of our being, we also have to address the current influences provided through peer ... Views: 392
Western psychology has been fixated on the idea of sexual energy being at the root of all creativity. Beginning with Freud they have discussed the sublimation of sexual energy into creative pathways of art, and intellectual effort. The sexual energy stems from the root chakra and provides a ... Views: 578
It is typical for human beings to associate their knowledge, their artistic achievements, their skills as something they create within themselves. They tether the ego-consciousness to all such developments, believing that somehow they are unique and special in terms of the ability to create ... Views: 256
What we actively perceive and pay attention to with our waking consciousness is a very small portion of the entire pattern of energetic forces we are constantly subjected to, and which act upon us, unseen and unrecognised. Whether it is physical radiation, vital forces, or mental thought-forms, ... Views: 270
Our surface awareness is basically the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Most of what takes place in our being occurs outside of the range of our active external perception of the senses and mental awareness. Even the interactions with the external reality we experience represent only a small fraction of ... Views: 307
One of the reasons that spiritual seekers have traditionally been advised to seek solitude and not engage in society is that there is a constant, subliminal interchange that takes place between all human beings. We generally do not notice it, but on an energetic, a vibrational level, we are ... Views: 162
We tend to pay attention to the various forms of external communication that take place between people. Written, verbal, and visual non-verbal cues through body language or expression, are all considered to be the major means of creating a relation between individuals. What we do not always ... Views: 237